NASHVILLE, TN — Derek Loomis, 29, a warehouse logistics coordinator and devoted listener of “The Ramsey Show,” ceremonially cut up all four of his credit cards during a Financial Peace University graduation ceremony at his church last Friday evening, only to discover approximately fourteen hours later that the Hampton Inn in Murfreesboro requires a credit card on file at check-in.

“I had the scissors. I had the moment. People clapped,” said Loomis, who was in Murfreesboro for his cousin’s wedding. “Nobody in that room mentioned hotels. Nobody mentioned rental cars. Nobody mentioned the seventeen other situations in modern life that apparently require a piece of plastic I no longer possess.”

Front desk clerk Anita Rowe, 24, told reporters she watched Loomis attempt to reassemble a halved Chase Sapphire with Scotch tape from his glove compartment for roughly eleven minutes before gently suggesting he try a debit card. Loomis said his debit card was declined because he had moved the funds into a “sinking fund envelope system” that was physically located in a shoebox under his bed in Nashville.

“Dave never talked about this part. He talks about gazelle intensity. He does not talk about standing in a hotel lobby at 11 p.m. holding two halves of a credit card and a roll of tape.”

Loomis’s wife, Kayla, 28, who had advocated for keeping “one emergency card,” reportedly said nothing during the entire ordeal but did send a single text to her mother that read, “I was right.”

Loomis ultimately slept in his car in the hotel parking lot, which he described as “the most financially responsible decision I’ve ever made.”

At press time, Loomis had applied for a new credit card “strictly for emergencies” and was already rehearsing how to explain it to his Financial Peace accountability partner.